Pentacle - A Self Collection

by Tom Piccirilli

  We passed a smattering of buildings up on the ridge and Cyndy said, "Here." She parked, turned on the courtesy light, and stared at me for a long time. I could understand the need; I wanted to get a better look at her too. The lip torn into a grin twitched a little, and there was a faint sigil scorch on the tips of her fingers. After a moment she seemed to reach some conclusion, got out and proceeded to unload the van. Soon she, Ellie and Paul all held powerful flashlights and had rifles slung over their shoulders. Claire reached for my hand again as they ushered us to the front door. "Come on."

  We didn't have far to walk. The hotel resided at the head of a crumbling ridge. At the rate of current erosion it looked like it would tumble down a thousand feet into the lake in another year or so. Live and dead trees dappled the area, branches twisted like tortured bodies arching out for relief.

  Murder, Self said.

  More than that. There's something else. What?

  We went in: it was the kind of hotel a small town with only a few strangers passing through a year would need. No more than five bedrooms, and I suspected all of them had never been occupied at the same time. Those who'd lived up here surrounding the town either hadn't had time to move or hadn't cared enough after the flood. Furniture, lighting fixtures, pictures on the wall, all remained intact. No looters had even bothered to finish the place off. Everything smelled of mildew and spore and faintly of blood. I opened a door and checked one of the rooms. Except for the dust it seemed perfectly habitable. Paul whispered something to his sister and left the room. In a few minutes I heard a generator grunt and lights came dimly to life.

  All five of us sat at the dining room table, so that we formed a pentagram, providing power. I rubbed my palms together and spun a litany web, thread-thin strands of protective glyphs that would wreathe the entire hotel. If anyone broke in, I'd know about it.

  Cyndy started to say something, but jerked herself to a stop, still throwing furtive glances, hunting my self who had touched and sang to her. One of us would break soon: either she or me or Self, and the truth would come spilling out and we'd get to the bottom of at least a few of our secrets.

  "Tell me about this madman."

  "Tell me about you," she said. "My mother believed there were people like you still left in the world. The ashipu and vitka runemasters who studied le livre des morts, Coming Forth by Day and Hermes Trigemistus. You've got knowledge of Khem, don't you?"

  "Cyn," Ellie warned, quietly.

  "Hush." Cyndy Hutchins leaned forward and faced me. "You can tell me that much, can't you? You know what I mean about Thoth and Hermes, the sermons of Isis to her son Horus. Admit it. You're a necromancer aren't you? I felt it a couple of times tonight. Am I wrong?"

  "No," I said.

  "So prove it."

  Without hesitation Self sashayed to her, giggling happily, the invitation clear, and climbed her shirtfront. Now we're talkin', baby. He kissed those brutalized lips, ringing them with his tongue. I almost gagged. Christ, his head, those thoughts: visions of the lowest circle and the seas of blood, flashes of Clark Gable and Errol Flynn and other great lovers. Cold sweat exploded on my forehead, veins bulging in my neck. His claws, sharp and long enough to easily spear her lungs, gently stroked her ugly cheek, and his brain blazed. Here damnation was an aphrodisiac. Cyndy fell back a step, unsure of what was happening, but perhaps certain that, in a hellish way, she was being loved, and being made love to. He continued his kiss. Visibly paling, she shuddered and looked as if she was about to vomit.

  "Stop it," Paul shouted at me. "Whatever you're doing, quit it."

  "I'm okay," she said, grinning a sickly smile that held some kind of meaning I didn't understand. "It's cool." She wiped her face with the tail of her shirt. "I think I get it now."

  Uh huh, Self said. That's my baby. Just didn't want to make it easy.

  She turned to me. "We'll be safe for now. In the morning I'll give you the whole story. Then you can decide if you still want to help or not." She pointed out a room right off the main hall. "We were here a couple of weeks ago, and there's a sleeping bag inside on the bed. The two of you can sleep in there. We'll keep watch."

  Claire looked at me longingly, beautiful brown eyes begging for me to fulfill a few of the hopes she'd kept alive on the wards; if not chopping wood to last out the Vermont winter, then to sweep her in my arms and make this place our honeymoon suite. I swallowed, thinking about it, while Self nibbled at my reserve.

  Danielle, lost love of my life, moved out through the mists of my mind, and that—however foolish a reason—after all these years, was still enough.

  That's not loyalty, Self said. It's— He paused, searching for the correct word, the proper deprecation. —Masochism.

  I wondered if he had really wanted to say self-destructive.

  I took Claire's hand and walked into the bedroom.

  "I knew there was something wonderful about you," she said. "Something awful, too, but I sensed your integrity. I think I've fallen in love with you."

  Nothing came that I wanted to say; my mouth worked like a mute's, so much inside suddenly loosening and freezing again. She put her arms around me, and I held her. I could allow that much, and maybe a little more. We kissed for a long while, but beneath a certain need resided another that wouldn't allow any more progress than this. Finally, as she sobbed into my chest, I said, "Try to get some rest."

  I hope you know better than to go to sleep in a place like this.

  I know better.

  I held Claire on the bed and used Romany cheiromancy to read the three bracelet lifelines of her wrist, the Via Lasciva and girdle of Venus twisting strangely: like most forms of prophecy it told contradictory tales. It took more than an hour for her to fall asleep. Her own youth, more than anything, reminded me of Danielle. I swept her hair from her forehead and drew the Eye of Horus, and the sign of his cat-headed sister Bast who was a healer of the mentally ill. It wouldn't do any good but it couldn't hurt; she wasn't crazy, but perhaps the blessing was meant for any of us. Bast was also a goddess of sex, and my own mind swam through my memories of Dani. Self stalked past Philip and Great-grandma, and visited the other dead in her head: a suicide from one of the wards who'd hooked into her psyche and hitched a ride. Every eidolon spirit from the drowned town moaned and wept; batches of gnawed bones and hints of rotted corpses, there at the bottom of the Midnight Falls lake.

  At three AM my mystic tripwires snapped and something came diving through the window.

  It hoisted itself over the shattered glass and sprang at me, a keening roar resounding. White and wet, it looked more human than it had a right to—hairless head and torso almost like a man, except for the quivering gills, arms heavily muscled and reaching out to strangle. Its skin was nearly translucent and I could see its intestines functioning, digesting God knew what, brown blood sluggishly pumping. The creature slid across the floor on centipede-like hindquarters eight feet in length, curling and rising in the air. Claire shouted and rolled off the bed, looking for a weapon.

  What is it? I asked.

  A bitching Beng, I think!

  Jesus, a North African desert demon that had now taken to the water? A mutant primitive nature deity? I'd never heard of it happening.

  Before I could finish a Mesopotamian spell, its teeth clamped onto my shoulder and my body boiled with poison and pain. I shrieked. Other windows in the hotel broke and I heard gunfire. The Beng's eyes rolled at my heavenly flavor, elongated tongue prodding the wound, lips sucking. It was impossible to concentrate but I tried to complete the incantation. Self leaped on its back and raked his claws against its skin, pulling up only wads of scales and slime. Venom leaked down my arm. Jagged blue bolts of electricity exploded around us as I jammed my fist beneath its jaw and prepared to hex its head off.

  Don't! Self shouted. The variant Khem will make the majiks blow up in your face!

  Then you kill it!

  What do you think I'm trying to do!

  Quit jabbering!


  He tore out more gouts of its mutant flesh. The creature howled and hissed, rippling and rising up until its head touched the ceiling, and wrapped its lower half around Self trying to squash him in its coils. He rode the Beng like a cowboy on a bucking bronco, and scrambled for purchase in the slime, those insectoid legs kicking him. He grabbed hold and bit into them, squirting brown blood across the bed. The taste sent him into overdrive, scratching and ripping and snarling, losing himself to lust, all human traits now submerged beneath his natural demonic ferocity.

  More Beng crawled through the window behind us; two others draped and slinked across the floor, rising on the bunched muscles of their hindquarters. I ran to Claire and spun her over the mattress, diving as the creature came down from the ceiling with enough force to squash me against the wall. "What do we do?" she shouted, terrified but in control. I tried to work around the variant, using other less eldritch skills. A Beng fell straight towards me and I hefted a chair and bashed its skull in. Claire screamed and I saw one of the creatures with its arms out to her, as if ready to waltz. Philip shot it with his sidearm from the other end of the death, and the Beng actually felt it a little, backing away as if annoyed by wasps. Great-grandma's pitchfork stabbed its abdomen.

  Thataway, gramma! Self yelled.

  The venom made my knees buckle. I said, "Screw this," and drew my fists together. I forced myself to stand. Black motes rose from my palms and mouth and eyes. Self gabbled and ripped and screeched as he ate through another Beng's body, Great-grandma by his side. More gunshots from the other room. I took a wild chance and called up a freakish mixture of Graeco-Egyptian majiks bonded through the Hermes Trismegistus— thrice greatest Hermes—with a prayer to Bast tossed in for good measure. The whole room rocked and schized out in a burst of brilliant white flame. The creatures roared and screamed and I was swept to the floor.

  I coughed and rolled over and listened to the hisses, and through the smoky haze and twisting bodies of the dying Beng I saw a man standing in the middle of the room dressed only in blue trunks. No, not quite a man anymore. He'd been worked on as well, mutant Khem having changed him into something like a half-breed Beng, a walking piranha—his hair receding, skin pale and slimy, with needle-sharp tiny teeth and gills making ugly noises sucking air. Before I could gather myself he'd stepped past me to Claire. He hauled her up by the hair and held a black-handled double-bladed witch's athame to her neck.

  "I suggest you end your endeavors," he told me. "Or I'll slit her throat."

  On my knees, I wavered, then fell back on my haunches. "Sure."

  "Very good. You can take orders. Most of your witching kind can't. One came through a few months back, and I had to kill him with his own knife." He had the inner-eye and spotted Self lying on the floor trying to get to his knees as well, a few of his claws and fangs broken, and mouth stuffed with that awful hybrid flesh. He smiled beatifically, centipede skin hanging over his lips. "Command your familiar to put up no further resistance." Self giggled at that, as if it was a good joke, me commanding him—a hell of a ribbing. "Do so this instant, or you and a considerable portion of this room will be covered in arterial spray."

  Don't make any stupid moves.

  Uh nuh, this sucker and his batch of buggy friends are mine.

  Soon, but not now.

  She's dead, anyway. You read it in her palm.

  Just do as you're told for once, damn it!

  Okay, okay. I'm cool.

  Paul rushed in behind me then, with his rifle held casually in his arms, pointed directly at the intruder's head. He said to me, under his breath, "Now I know you were telling the truth." His voice firmed. "Hello, Shiphrah. I've been waiting for this."

  "Hello, Paul. Seems your crew's grown a bit."

  "Guess you could say that."

  I saw Paul's grin—the beginning of a smile that told me he was going to pull the trigger no matter what, whether he hit Claire, killed me, his sister, himself, whatever the cost, he was going to pull the trigger. I said, "No," and wheeled, throwing my elbow against the barrel of the rifle. The shot went wild and scraped my forearm, ricocheting off the headboard.

  Shiphrah's blade edged deeper into Claire's throat; she gasped and gritted her teeth. "What say we all do like this guy tells us, huh? For the moment, maybe?"

  Cyndy and Ellie stepped into the room, slow and easy now, weapons out and the floorboards snapping under their feet. Cyndy had a hellish amount of writing on her face, as if a world of the past tried valiantly, but vainly, to reshape her features. Waves of love and hate and betrayal kept twisting her already twisted visage. Self's heart soared and I thought that if demons could fall in love, he truly had. She stared at Shiphrah stolidly, until his smarmy arrogance seemed to melt from him, leaving behind nothing but the telltale signs of amphibious madness and obsession.

  "You shouldn't have come back, Cyn," he said. "It's breeding season."

  She slowly slung the rifle and holstered her Browning, as if feeling she'd never need to pull them again. She moved to him, frowning, and we watched fat beads of blood roll down Claire's neck. "I never should have left, Ship. I should have stopped you, or maybe died trying, but I was wrong to run."

  "There's still room for you—for all of you—in the new order rising. You've all heard the call, all you have to do is just let yourself go to answer it. Believe me now, even if you didn't then . . . it's worth everything. More than everything."

  "The new order's an old order, Ship, you never grasped that simple fact. It died for a reason."

  "Yes, it did, and . . . ."

  "It's older than man by millennia and still offers nothing more than the worst in us, anyway. So what's the difference? What's being bred out in the lake that you can't find out there in the world? Murder, destruction, bloodletting?"

  "Shut up. You haven't seen what I've seen, what the Lord of the Watchtower has given me in return for my services. There are entire planets and dimensions waiting for us, Cyn, on the outer edge of the mind. Star systems, I've seen them."

  "You're just a Judas to our people, Ship. You're playing a role. The evil Khem you've loosed will be bottled again, the way it was in Persia. I'm going to do it. I'm going to kill that thing in the lake." Cool and totally collected, Cyndy showed hardly any emotion. "And you with it for destroying our friends and families."

  "I am an apostle of . . . ."

  "You're an insane and silly son of a bitch. Look at yourself, Ship, you aren't even human anymore." Her brutalized lips, twisting in disgust, curled horribly. "Now, you going to stand there like that all night, or are you going to take her hostage and sneak back down to the lake? Leave, Ship. I'll be coming after you soon. So, that's it. Go on."

  Self's tongue lolled and dripped and he clenched and unclenched his fists, claws clacking together. Shiphrah simply shook his head sadly as if he'd failed once again to explain a universe of beauty to the blind. He pulled Claire to the shattered window and threw her forward on top of a squished Beng, his fingers moving in tight patterns. I recognized them and performed the exact same motions, but for a few modifications. Claire flopped over the creature and dropped to her knees as fiery sigils similar to those I'd used before spun over her head straight at the rest of us. Flaming ankhs rose from my hands and met with the sigils in midair, majiks canceling each other out so that the room grew bright with a nice Disney light show but nothing else.

  By then Shiphrah had escaped back into the darkness, where the Lord of the Watchtower slept bloated on bones in the drowned shores of a dead town, waiting to be reborn.

  Claire fell into my arms and said, "Uhm, I think . . ." and desperately tried not to cry. I stroked her hair and felt her holding back, fighting to keep it in though the toughness had been worn away, until a slight 'eep' sounded in her throat and she was sobbing uncontrollably.

  We've got troubles, I said.

  You're telling me. If the Watchtower Lord is involved it's no wonder the arcana keeps futzing up.

  Not when I used the
Hermes Trismegistus. The ankhs counter-measured perfectly.

  Shiphrah—it was a name from the bible—one of the midwives who saved the male Hebrew children that the king of Egypt ordered to be murdered at birth. Names held power and meaning. Why would a gypsy be named from Hebrew history? Shiphrah was midwifing the Lord of the death lake, giving birth to what?

  Cyndy touched my arm and said, "Thank you. Thanks for helping us."

  "We should go after him."

  "In an hour. The sun will be up then. And his master—whatever it is—that Lord—it won't rise to the surface in the daylight. That thing in the water that murdered Midnight Falls."

  At the table we sat in pentagram fashion again. "Tell me the whole story."

  Paul looked at the front door torn off its hinges, the floor covered with dead Beng—their gills expanded, and burned black, fried in insect juices, bullet holes tearing up faces—as if he were watching a low-budget flick on late night cable. "In retrospect, it's incredibly short."

  Ellie coughed daintily into her fist as the scent of maleficia and murder pervaded the room. "Almost everything happened in a single night last summer, a year ago this week. Hard to believe that's all the time that's passed, even having gone through it."

  Cyndy started to say something and came up short, staring at a point on the far wall where muddy Beng blood still drooled to the floor. She was digging deep, bringing it all up from a well of pain she'd capped a long time ago. Self moaned and bounded across the table, where he wrapped himself against her chest and hugged her, tongue flicking over the deformed side of her face. Eyes closed, Cyndy shivered, smiling as if she knew someone had stepped in for her lost love Shiphrah and now held her in his wake. She cleared her throat. "Ship somehow got his hands on a text of the Egyptian book of the dead, Coming Forth By Day. Not just a translation, but original papyri."

  "That would make it nearly six thousand years old."